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Windows 7 Computer Shuts Itself Down, Does Not Power Down

Video and sound shut off by themselves after a few hours of use, the machine does not power down and it does not reboot. I get a "Windows did not close normally" message when I start it again. When I start it in safe mode, it shuts down after only a few minutes.

I have tried restoring the system to an earlier point, using Windows repair, and more than one registry cleaner.

I'm concerned that this is damaging my video card and who knows what else.

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Have you tried running any of the Dell diagnostics? You didn't say which of the Dell models this is, but I have heard they are having motherboard issues in some newer ones. If this is still under warranty, the Dell tech will talk you through it over the phone and respond on how to get the hardware addressed. I am leaning toward them rather than DIY because the speed, etc. tell me this might be under warranty and you don't want to do something that would invalidate that.

I am thinking motherboard or RAM.

Windows errors may be an indicator of a problem, but that does not mean the operating system is the problem.

What type of pc is it. I had a similar problem last year with my Compaq laptop, it was only 18 months old but unfortunately the problem was caused by a faulty hard drive which had to be replaced. If I was streaming a football match I would have to re-boot at half time to make sure I could watch the second half without it shutting down. Obviously there are other possibilities which I and am sure other people will explore and hopefully find a different outcome.
Steve Eastwood

If it's not just a power setting, the first thing I'd try is to change the behavior of your system during a failure.
Click Start
Right Click Computer
Click Properties
Click Advanced System Settings
Click Settings under Startup and Recovery
Remove the check from Automatically restart

Next, look in %SystemRoot%\MEMORY.DMP for indications of what was happening when your system failed.

c> Video and sound shut off by themselves after a few hours of use,
c> the machine does not power down and it does not reboot.

If this is a desktop system then it may be that the video card cooler
is clogged with dust/fluff and is making it overheat. This can lock up
the graphics without causing the system to shut down - forcing a shut
down gives the error message on restart. Could be a similar thing if
it's a laptop and the cooling is partially clogged as the graphics
chip generated more heat than the CPU so is more likely to overheat.

I would have thought, thermal cut-out would throttle a PC down before it crashes a system and it would do it a lot sooner than "a few hours of use."

CPU's will get up to temperature very quickly and the same on video cards and chipsets. You may have the motherboard set or the motherboard has a setting for the protection of the CPU that is set too low, or you are or have tried to over-clock the system. i7 CPU's can be very over-clockable if you have the right one with the right stepping. Saying all that I've never seen a well featured BIOS from a major brand, generally they tend to be very restricted in their settings and customisations are very rarely present.

With graphic cards, you would normally see graphic anomalies prior to crashing unless you just leave the system on while you are not there and come back to it crashed.

I suggested checking the power settings to discount them from the diagnostics, you'd feel a bit daft if you went through all this only to find the system was set to sleep or shut down after 2 hours. Always look at the obvious first.

It looks like the problem was overheating caused by dust after all. When I
managed to get the case open, the inside didn't look very dusty at all, but
I cleaned it out, and the computer is now running--apparently--very well.

HOWEVER: I ran the Dell diagnostics when that website finished maintenance,
and it is giving me conflicting information:

Good that's all it appeared to be and shows how even "relatively
clean" isn't always enough !! Depends on how insulating the dust is
and a fine coating of some materials can cause dramatic reduction in
heat transfer. As ever, prevention is better than cure so make sure
you only use the laptop on a hard surface that doesn't shed dust or
fibres.

As for the HD test failure - this is a built-in one from Dell and if
it's not working you'll need to look for other HD test programs, or
just ignore the failed test as the other one passed anyway :-)

Tis is one of those situations where only time will tell, cleaning thoroughly will help, but it will be a question of whether it is a cure, in my own case, cleaning helped for a while and although diagnostics were ok , the hard drive needed replacing, however, this may not be the case. At the end of the day, hard drives dont cost as much as they used to, and can be fitted easily. Hope you have solved your problem

Hi Cowboynyc, dust can not only create overheating but possibly electrical issues dependant upon its composition such as static. You can get filters that will stop dust getting in. My tower already has them built in but you can certainly prevent more dust getting in. I've even seen fine bags put over the entire case, although it kind of kills the aesthetic if you have a nice case like mine.

As for the test results, I would say that's more to do with the Dell program than it is to do with a faulty HDD, Make sure you have Smart enabled in the BIOS if it has that option this will let you know if the HDD is going to die.

Most hard drive manufacturers have free diagnostic software. Even though I swear by dell, they didn't make the drives.
What does windows say about it? go to computer, right-click on 'c', tools, and 'error checking'. It won't let you check while running, but will set for a check when you reboot.

Buy a replacement drive RIGHT NOW!!! With the price of hard drives so low, ANY indication of hard drive problems should be dealt with by replacing the drive. There are any number of free and inexpensive programs out there that will image your drive and let you image it back onto the new drive.

Personally, I would take this opportunity to do a clean, fresh install on the new hard drive, using the old one to store files, etc. to use in rebuilding the computer. Whatever you do, once you are happy, I'd trash the hard drive.

Hello cowboynyc, this sounds like a virus; do you have User accounts
control turned on? and by the way does this power down thing occur at
regular intervals? scan your scheduled tasks folder for any malware.
Overall, do a thorough scan first.
Thanks

I had this happen on my HP slimline that is about a year old,
and it was an electricity issue, I unplugged other things thatwere plugged into the same electrical outlet, and it stopped powering down.
Something else that I did was to turn off all the power saving features for the monitor,and video board since the default is for these to be turned off to save power. Just a couple simple ideas that I hope works for you too! Yvette

Hello cowboync, after reading your post again, i got a somewhat different
idea! it looks like some device driver malfunction; in safe mode, VGA and
Sound drivers will still function so this might be the reason why getting
away from Normal mode doesn't work. Try uninstalling the drivers one at a
time while testing for the initial problem- be sure to have the Sound and
VGA driver software downloaded or on CD before removal.
Thanks

Now that your machine is running better, I would check to see if you can download an update to BIOS and Dell Diagnostics from their website (I have been able to do this after the warranty expired). I feel like the diagnostics version and BIOS are not in sync. Like several others who have commented, I would not be fully committed to the diagnostics for the hard drive (preferring the manufacturers hard drive utility), but it is good to have available for other components.

I have a program that monitors SMART (Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology) this can actually give a reason why the HDD might be failing. As a lot of techies know, SMART doesn't tell you why, it just tells you it is going to fail. I like to know why a HDD has failed and this piece of software can monitor the HDD and generally give a reason, it may pre-empt the SMART warning if you can see what's going off. A kind of SMART for SMART warning.

Acronis Drive Monitor (http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/products/driv e-monitor/) is another freeware program which analyzes SMART reports. I've been using it for a couple of years now. It gave me a warning about a 600gb laptop drive that otherwise seemed to be operating just fine. I replaced the drive and put the original in a USB external box to back up my image collection; it failed within two months.

I have no experience with diskcheckup. It may be as good or even better than Acronis Drive Monitor. I'd like to see some comments from people who have tried both.

(As I am typing, Acronis Drive Monitor popped up a warning that my C drive is above the warning temperature level. This is not atypical for my laptop. The drive temperature warning level can be adjusted, but the same warning level management applies to all drives.)

Time to check the cooling, and if that's OK one of the causes of HD
overheating is worn bearings. Time to be looking for a replacement
before it gets any worse - excessive heat causes head crashes too as
things expand beyond tolerances !!

BTW - I'd not be adjusting the warning level from the default. This is
set to alert you to the problem before it gets to the danger level.

I've had good luck with the Acronis Disk Manager, too .... and though I've not used the Passmark Disk Checkup, I've been happy with some of their other products and dark.angel makes great software suggestions.

I would check the hardware of this said computer first. In my years of fixing computers sometimes it is not software and just a dirty computer. Make sure all heatsinks inside computer are free of dust clogs. Make sure computer case is not getting to hot like in a corner or up against wall. these are things I would look at first then the software...

first test your ram memory [in bios] and then look in the bios to the cpu
heat.
if ok you can test the video cart with a live cd from a linux distro.

download and burn a live cd and start it without install.

No data will installed on your computer.

with regards

hifinetwork.

2012/9/16 Community_Member email@removed

> **
> Reply from topper727 on Sep 15 at 9:04 PM I would check the hardware
> of this said computer first. In my years of fixing computers sometimes it
> is not software and just a dirty computer. Make sure all heatsinks inside
> computer are free of dust clogs. Make sure computer case is not getting to
> hot like in a corner or up against wall. these are things I would look at
> first then the software...
>

I would check the hardware of this said computer first. In my years of fixing computers sometimes it is not software and just a dirty computer. Make sure all heatsinks inside computer are free of dust clogs. Make sure computer case is not getting to hot like in a corner or up against wall. these are things I would look at first then the software...

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